Sweetness Follows
by likerealpeopledo
Summary: Follow up to Designated Survivor (a fix it fic for the AYINTL revival). Rory and Logan have reunited and they are living in domestic bliss. Mostly.
1. Chapter 1

_Chapter One_

 _Life changes in the instant-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking_

It had only taken one instant for Logan Huntzberger's life to change completely.

If he was honest, it had taken one of any number of other things - one lapsed maintenance check on a chartered jet, one phone call in the middle of the night, one missed birth control pill - to really alter his true course, and he would not choose to undo a single one of them.

Maybe it was callous, but he would grieve his parents a thousand times over if it meant he could have just one Lorelai Beatrix Gilmore in his life.

As it turned out, all the years that Logan had spent as the fun uncle hadn't really paid dividends into fatherhood in the ways that he'd expected. Even if he was top of the heap in terms of uncle-ing, his true goal was to be a fantastic father, and maybe the skillset wasn't exactly the same. The literature about fatherhood was overwhelming, the stakes were high, and his examples were...complicated, at best. Granted, simply by the grace of being present, not to mention both upright and breathing, he had already far exceeded any expectations previously held by most, if not all, of the Gilmore family.

Luckily for Logan, it was the little victories that he had chosen to relish.

Because without those quick and dirty wins he'd managed to eke out early, he'd already be falling behind.

"This isn't a competition, you know." Rory said, distracted. Not that he could blame her for having her attention pulled, since she was up to her elbows in lavender and chamomile scented bathwater and biting her lip as she doggedly scrubbed shampoo through Bea's hair. In response, their three month old daughter produced what had to be, from a developmental standpoint, a highly advanced, perfectly round set of saliva and soap-born bubbles. The foam cascaded down Bea's chin and landed lopsidedly on her rounded, glistening belly while Rory cupped her hand against the baby's forehead in an attempt to prevent the rest of the soap from testing its slogan. "Nobody ever wins at parenting."

"Tell me about it."

"Logan, come on. Don't tell me you're worried about a _grade_."

Logan raised a skeptical eyebrow as he tossed Rory a clean washcloth. No, that's exactly what he was worried about, along with a whole host of other unnameable parenting related anxieties. But to dwell on naming any one of them was proving difficult, especially since Bea had just intercepted the cloth and was attempting to pull it toward her lips. After an initial uncoordinated struggle, she inserted a particularly sodden corner into her mouth. As the light of hard-won accomplishment flashed through her young eyes, a similar swell of paternal pride swept down Logan's chest. Hand-eye coordination at three months? Bea was a genius.

"This isn't _Intro to Economics,_ Rory. It's our child's life we're talking about. How am I the only one concerned about this? It is far more than likely that she's going to have an _opinion,_ and with the way technology is headed, there's a better than average chance that it will be very public and accompanied by some sort of ratings system."

He paced across the bathroom, picturing the grown version of Bea squinting at a microchip that rated his paternal performance the way he currently rated his Uber drivers. It did not succeed in giving him a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Rory wasn't deterred. Logan could always count on her to be the voice of reason. "She may also be facing widespread famine due to clean food shortages and end up married to a cyborg or even a merperson. We don't know the future."

 _Or not._ "No more Guillermo del Toro movies for you before bedtime, young lady." Logan chided both Rory and Bea with mock seriousness. Truly though, if the merperson loved Bea and made her happy, he wasn't going to get all bent out of shape about their sporting gills or having to serve kelp at Thanksgiving.

"They do make me kind of anxious." Her brow was furrowed in that academic focused way that she used to reserve for analyzing Kafka and Proust, but this time it was for determining the best method in which to hold a wriggly Bea while still managing to bathe her neck and torso. Water splashed onto the counter as Bea slid down slightly and Rory cursed softly under her breath.

"Kind of?" Logan teased.

"Shut up. Those Pan's Labyrinth dreams weren't _that_ bad."

"Tell that to my shins, woman." Logan edged up behind the mother of his child, dipping his face into the back of her neck. Rory startled, almost losing her grip on the baby. "Sorry, Ace," he said as he backed up and out of her space. Bathing had to be one of the least safe activities that their newborn engaged in regularly, and he figured he shouldn't add to the complexity.

Rory harrumphed as Bea splashed a small torrent of bath water onto her mother's light blue t-shirt, darkening a patch on her stomach.

"I don't want the merman to turn her against us is all I'm saying, Ace." Logan lamented into the mirror, and decided to distract himself by digging into the basket of clean baby clothes. He sorted through options swiftly, in search of a sleeper that closed with a zipper. Rejecting any option closing via the dreaded snap method, he was able to find several zippered pairs that looked like viable options. Before the baby, he'd thought that snaps looked like a ridiculously simple, rudimentary way to dress a small person. Experience had indicated otherwise. Perhaps it was the lining them up and matching them back together that kept him from a one hundred percent success rate with the closures, but user error or no, it was an extra challenge level he couldn't possibly stare down at 3:00 a.m. Lorelai had once referred to snaps as the 'Devil's buttons' and in Logan's limited experience, she wasn't wrong.

"Butterflies or bumblebees?" Logan asked, holding up two sleepers for Rory's approval.

Thanks to the diminutive that he'd assigned his daughter at birth, ("Rory B., meet Rory A. Oh, Bea. Yep, baby girl, that's gonna stick,") a plethora of bumblebee related onesies, sleepers, blankets and related accessories had been bestowed upon the baby by all their friends and relatives. Enough bee memorabilia to make Logan worry that they were just setting their daughter up for a future barrage of Bea Arthur references or melancholic dances in music videos and he'd eventually be the only one that she could rightly blame. Granted, it didn't make him worry enough that he'd done anything to modify the behavior or the nickname, but it worried him all the same. There were just turning out to be far too many ways to screw up.

"What about the cute zebra one?" Rory asked, giving the baby a final once-over.

Logan would not answer in the affirmative until he could locate and examine the romper and its precise method of entry and exit. Zipper. "Cute zebra pajamas it is!"

If someone had told Logan a year ago that he'd be pawing through bumblebee onesies with purpose and assisting in the bathtime rituals of a female under the age of 30, he'd have laughed directly (and none too politely) in their face. But there he was, someone's dad, and the concept was wide and unwieldy enough that he was just now wrapping his head around it - barely.

They'd suffered through the yawning stretches of long term inconsolable crying jags and days upon days where it seemed like sleep might never visit them again, but inevitably, a routine had eventually emerged. To the untrained eye, it even seemed as if they'd developed a fantastic little egalitarian structure. Actually, it was pretty clearly evidenced through the color-coded and meticulous chart of bottle feedings, wet diapers, and nap lengths (the morning one could be longer, the evening one less so) that Rory kept housed on the front of the refrigerator for quick reference and easy access. Though God save Logan if he attempted to add his own hash mark instead of reporting it to the proper official (Rory).

And if Rory was the certified schedule keeper, disciplinarian, and nurturer, then Logan's role was more of a responsibility understudy - when Mommy couldn't perform her duties, he would sweep in and do what was required - but the majority of his skills laid in entertainment and distraction, which really did hold their own kind of weight in terms of utility. He was probably most proud of how quickly he was now able to change a diaper - especially after the less than auspicious start with all those tiny tapes and the fact that it took several incorrect attempts to realize how integral the concepts of "front and back" were to proper diapering success.

And yes, sometimes he was surprised at how well they managed to keep a tiny human alive and thriving with minimal practical experience. What didn't surprise him was how well Rory and he managed as a team. Sure, there were days when no one in the house had slept for more than fifteen minutes at a time and more than one person left a room in tears, but what mattered was they'd figured out how to do it all together.

After all, they'd both dodged their way through the initial Is She A Baby or Is She A Bomb minefield of the first few weeks, and having a companion, a _partner_ , made it feel like they were actually managing to build something solid. Not just existing.

They'd existed separately before, and now they had a trio, and it was more exhilarating to Logan than any of the other death-defying stunts he'd pulled in his time. He'd be lying if he said he didn't start to daydream sometimes at particularly mind-numbingly dull board meetings, and even though he'd been repeatedly warned about savoring the early days, the daydreams were more and more about Bea growing up.

For some reason the scene he seemed to return to most often was this gauzy, faraway idea of a five year old Bea, with twin blond braids and a round, open face, gripping tightly onto the palm of his hand as they crossed a wide, busy street. There was just something about the sweet tangle of her much smaller fingers into his larger ones that made even his future self absolutely positive that Bea was safe and that it was him, not anyone else, that caused her to feel that way. Safe, beloved. Whole.

The tableau could go further, if he wanted it to, and often it did. In his mind's eye, he'd walk Bea to school, a little private one that emphasized a love of literature and critical thinking skills and that required parental volunteering on a monthly basis. (If it was an especially arduous meeting, Logan dream-volunteered as the Field Day Coordinator, designing obstacles and events that celebrated the school year ending. But it had to be an excruciatingly long meeting to get deep enough to do any real planning. Designing an imaginary zip line obstacle course required a two-day work retreat level of zone-out to accomplish, longer if there was also a bounce house.) A burly crossing guard with a pushbroom mustache and a warm smile- Logan had named him Stan - was stationed at their quaint street corner, and when father and daughter approached would say, "Howdy, Miss Bea. It's a lovely day, isn't it?" as he held out his hand to pause the oncoming school buses and SUVs. Safely across the street, Logan and Bea would stop on the stoop of her school to say their goodbyes. Bea would lift her adorably dimpled chin and gaze up at him, all wonder and adoration and sweetness, hugging his legs as tightly as her five-year-old arms would allow as they parted. She'd say, "I love you, Daddy, have a good day," and then inevitably, someone in the boardroom would cough or drop their pen with a clatter, and Logan would be shoved back into reality, all gooey and melted like a chocolate bar left too long out in the sun.

He loved the daydream, looked forward to it, on occasion scheduled extra meetings so he could space out and engage in it. There were other variations, of course. Ones where he carried Bea sleep-warm and boneless up to bed after falling asleep on the sofa watching _The Princess Bride_ together, or where he took her sailing for the first time or taught her how to write her name in a big, loopy letters. His daydreams were admittedly fairly basic and probably not all that grand to the outside observer, but they still felt so much like dreams. Cloudy and far-off but hopefully, completely attainable. The problem was, he didn't want to get so wrapped up in what was to come that he missed anything about what was happening now.

And now it was bathtime. Or the end of it anyway. He was supposed to be getting the baby toweled off and dressed, and Bea's expressive eyebrows dipped as if she was inspecting the efficacy of each of his methods. From her quizzical stare, she was clearly dubious of most of them.

"You know, I'm doing the best I can here, kid. You have a lot of books and crannies where water can be trapped. It's a design flaw. No offense."

Bea blinked up at him and waited.

"Okay, okay, I'm all done." Logan waved his hands in the air briefly to indicate completion.

Bea continued to stare him down like he owed her money.

It was probably more than likely that Bea's occasional distrust of Logan was passed down on both sides of the family, considering his history (or the history that they'd foisted on him, at any rate). Other than that, Baby Bea was an inexact combination of both Logan and Rory's genetic material: her fluffy hair was a honeyed brown, naturally growing in an eerie resemblance to the messy haircut Logan had favored in the early 2000s; her eyes were evolving into oceanic blue saucers like her mother's and grandmother's. She'd inherited Rory's cleft chin, Logan's nose, and the lung capacity of a distant relative who had apparently been a deep sea diver. Anyone who encountered Bea and Logan on their daily walk through the Gilmore's gated community looked down into her passing stroller commented on her beauty, her calm, or her soul-quakingly enormous eyes. And without fail, Bea stared placidly back at each onlooker, further impressing them with her maturity and grace.

Okay, so maybe maturity wasn't something that he had personally bequeathed to his daughter, either, and that was fine. He could admit it.

Logan liked that Bea was a very solemn baby, and it also explained why she didn't always seem to appreciate the truly goofier aspects of his personality. Tricks that used to kill with his nephews - raspberries blown on naked Budda bellies, hilariously high and low pitched noises, even high-flying baby airplane games - fell completely flat with Logan and Rory's daughter. It was clear that Bea appreciated a more sophisticated wit, like being read satire from the New Yorker or listening in on NPR podcasts. Logan swore that she would straighten up all prim and proper in her bunny swing, little pink lips pursing in expectation, when Rachel Maddow appeared on MSNBC each evening.

But it was already after Rachel Maddow's time slot and Rory had quietly slipped away to sneak in a few uninterrupted hours of whatever she wanted (Logan hoped she'd pick sleep, because sleepless Rory had been getting progressively less patient with him), so Logan and Bea were left alone to huddle together in the nursery. Logan, of course, had hopes of lulling the baby into an unencumbered sleep after her nighttime feeding. Bea's plans were less clear.

"Daddy has mixed you the finest of formulas this evening, Mistress Lorelai. It's a full bodied soy protein. Very oaky barrell. I hear the bouquet is a bit sour at times, however, so I apologize, perhaps we let this one go too long in the aging process."

Bea responded by pushing her tiny palm into the bottom of the bottle near Logan's hand, as if the thrust or trajectory wasn't quite proper and she needed to recalibrate.

"I'll let the sommelier know that you approve." Logan said, tipping his chin down to hold the bottle while he readjusted in the glider. Finally satisfied with the positioning and procurement of her nightly meal, Bea languidly stretched her full twenty-two inches of body length across her father's lap and curled her toes into the meat of his thigh, her eyes half-lidded as she breathed heavily through her nose and gulped at her late night dinner.

It was too quiet, with Rory upstairs and just the sound of Bea's breathing and the occasional creak of the gliding rocker. Bea's weight was solid and warm in his lap and waves of affection surged through his chest as they rocked. She was beautiful and she was theirs and there were so many ways that it could all go wrong. That he could unintentionally screw it all up or somehow manage to lose it.

It wasn't like he'd had any practice. Parenthood was uncharted terrority and he didn't have a compass or a topographical map or anything more than the sense that he had to do it all the opposite way that Mitchum and Shira had, or at least much much better.

"Can I tell you something?" Logan stroked at the smooth hair near the baby's ear and by her slow and deliberate presleep blinks, she showed no indication of resistance.

Encouraged by Bea's agreeable silence, Logan swallowed thickly against the emotion that seemed to be rising in his throat. "You're my favorite anything, ever, and if you ever don't know that, really don't know it in your bones, then I'm not doing this right. So first, you need to promise me that you'll say something. This is me, telling you that you get a free pass for that, so take advantage of it, kiddo." Logan pushed his toes gently against the floor, inciting the rocker to glide backward. When the bottle accidentally jostled out of the baby's grip, he gently repositioned Bea so the movement wouldn't further disrupt her meal.

Bea took another long blink and emitted what sounded like a frustrated sigh around the nipple of her bottle as she settled back in.

"They say it's biology, you know. That you look like me so I love you more because my caveman brain wouldn't be able to do it otherwise. Just so you know, I think that's a bunch of crap." Moonlight glinted off her still dark eyes as she watched his lips form shapes. He wasn't even sure that she could make them out at all, but he knew she heard him, that she felt his heart beating against her, for her. "I don't need the extra help, baby, because I love you more than I've been able to figure out how to measure, so just know, no matter what, you've got me. And I need you to be clear on one thing. Well, probably more than one thing, but one main thing- it's my job to keep you safe, even though I can barely," he paused, deciding to change tactics since it seemed unwise to lay _you and your mom are pretty much all I have and I'm barely holding it together as it is, so um, don't go getting distant on me_ at the feet of someone who neither walked nor talked. "So, I don't take a lot of things seriously, but that, keeping you safe, keeping you happy, that I do. Know, you have to know, that I would do anything for you...I would do absolutely anything. And I will. Always."

The house remained still and silent, while baby Lorelei gazed up at him, in what he chose to take for absolute agreement and inherent understanding.

He'd be the first to admit that he'd felt disconnected from Rory's pregnancy at times (the entire first trimester, for instance) but even once he'd found out about the baby, the fact that they were separated by layers of skin and uterus and amniotic fluid made her somehow less real. Maybe he was prone to hyperbole, but there at 12:37 a.m., with flesh and bone and a generous swirl of downy hair, she was absolutely the realest thing he had.

Bea was what love was, even if how she arrived was purely accidental.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 **Summary:**

Rory's POV

 **Chapter Text**

"Rory, he's not okay." In her late thirties and closing fast on forty, Logan's older sister, Honor, resembled Shira in so many ways, and even more so when she was about to degrade Logan. Rory struggled not to define the look as feral and promptly failed.

It had been a nice dinner, one of their bimonthly We Survived the Huntzberger Family (Mostly) affairs, with pot roast and fingerling potatoes and comfort foods that Shira and Mitchum would have snickered about and thought were beneath them. Rory wasn't sure why Honor was trying to pick a fight. Or if it wasn't a fight, voice a concern that seemed pretty unfounded.

Rory had always thought that she had a pretty firm grasp on what made Logan tick and what his responses might be to a multitude of different stimuli. Rory knew that Logan's drink of choice was whiskey thanks to one of Humphrey Bogart's lines in Casablanca, and it was the same reason he didn't drink martinis anymore. She knew that he pretended to hate waking up early but instead reveled in those predawn hours when he could answer emails and drink his coffee in relative quiet and he would even set a separate alarm on his phone to do it. Honor probably didn't know that Logan was surprisingly sentimental, or that he'd ferreted away every ticket stub and playbill from every date, every scribbled out card or letter Rory had ever written him. Post-it notes that she'd stuck on his edited Daily News articles were still stacked in one of his office drawers somewhere, gathering lint where they used to have glue. Honor probably didn't know how Logan could always recount everything that Rory had worn during important events and his eye for dress sizes and style choices remained impeccable. How Rory trusted him to buy the perfect gift for anyone. Or that he was painstakingly polite to servers and flight attendants and hotel staff and the tips that he bequeathed upon them were as bountiful as his charm. Rory knew Logan, up to and including the cedary smelling pomade that he used every morning because he woke up with his hair going seven hundred directions and none of them correct. She knew from the line of his shoulders that he begrudgingly shared a razor when she'd forgotten to add hers to the grocery list, and that all she had to promise was that she'd stop leaving the cap off the toothpaste in return.

She knew him well enough to know when something wasn't quite right, and she was pretty sure that this wasn't one of them. Until now.

Plus, Logan wasn't even around to defend himself, as he was off in Richard's study with Honor's husband Josh, perusing whatever selection of cigars hadn't made it out the front door during her grandmother's grief-induced whirlwind fire sale. It didn't seem fair to accuse him of being less than okay without him there to rebuff it somehow.

"Honestly, Rory, I think the last time I've seen him this out of it was after you two split in college. Not even with my parents-"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Honor." Rory responded cooly. Maybe there was a part of Rory, the confrontational bit of Lorelai and Emily that still bloomed and lived inside of her, that wanted to march over to Honor and tear her wheat blond hair out by the root for even insinuating that Logan might not be anything but content with their current situation. Instead, she sputtered, "I don't—he's not—"

Confusion flickered over Honor's sharp features, until she realized what Rory was hearing, "Oh, Rory, no, no. I don't mean that he's miserable or that it's your fault or...you know, sometimes I blame my parents for never having anything nice to say, but still always saying something at all, because people assume that it's contagious." She bit her lip. "No, I'm worried about him, and I know you've seen it, or at least you will. If I check on him, he'll get all defensive and embarrassed and scramble to cover it up, like it's some kind of defect instead of just being a natural part of all these changes. You know, when JJ was born, Josh got a little postpartum himself, because once all the excitement wears off, you're just left with a lot of responsibility and very little sleep."

Rory could hear the men off in the distance, voices carrying over the electronic din of the nephews' post-dinner entertainment. Logan had been a little quieter, maybe, but he was always so sweet and attentive with Bea, but if she was honest, she knew that Honor had seen what she had the last few months. Those smiles that didn't meet his eyes or the new and uncharacteristic blankness in his expressions sometimes when he thought she was too distracted to notice. Even for the small stretches that Bea slept, Logan hadn't been, which was made clear from the detritus of half-drunk cups of chamomile tea that seemed to appear overnight on every flat surface and his new and bizarrely extensive knowledge of every As Seen on TV product known to man.

"He's fine, Honor. We have a newborn, and he does such a good job with her. Her schedule is good, but it's not perfect, and Logan is always willing to pull a night shift-"

Honor looked to bite back a harsher response, so maybe she wasn't as like Shira as Rory had originally thought. "I know he's fine, Rory, he's Logan. He's always fine. But just-just keep your eye out, okay? He's really good at keeping up appearances. It's kind of in our DNA, so when it starts to slip, people notice."

With that, Honor left to pry her oldest son, JJ, off of the silk curtain in the foyer, because at five, he already could have benefitted from pharmacological management of some of his more impulsive behaviors. Before Rory was able give any of Honor's warnings a proper processing, her in-laws had already bundled their rambunctious brood into their departing Range Rover, leaving Rory to decide how to manage this new information without intercession or distraction. She watched as Logan collected Bea into his arms for the beginning of her nightly routine, narrating each activity with an amiable chirp.

"Fantastic news, Bea, it looks like Berta recovered Mr. Scabnose after his recent AWOL. Guess who's getting a raise?" His voice always took on a lighter and gentler cadence when speaking to Bea, and it made Rory's heart a little lighter. He's fine.

Bea opened and closed her fists in the general direction of the stuffed horse that Logan had just waved in triumph, and he tucked it up under the baby's chin as he gathered favorite blankets and toys and pacifiers for bed. "I feel like there's a pair of horsey pajamas with a zip up here to wear in honor of your friend's return, so come help Daddy find them, all right?"

Bea didn't disagree as they disappeared with Logan's heavier footfalls up to the second floor.

Rory waited for them in the foyer under the guise of continued clean up, as one of Honor's boys had managed to overturn more than one potted plant and had tracked a breadcrumb trail of soil in some sort of complicated figure eight through the main hallway. She swept half-heartedly until Logan returned to the living room with Bea and his copy of The Year of Magical Thinking, the memoir that Logan had been working through for what seemed like months. This week he'd been reading some of the shorter, less depressing passages to Bea, extolling the sentence structure and the genius of Didion as Bea tugged on his shirt front absently and nursed her evening bottle against Logan's muscular chest. "In a few years someone is going to be reading Mommy's book to their favorite girl and celebrating her economical choice of words, so just you wait," he'd say as father and daughter beamed at each other over the dog eared paperback.

Tonight, the book laid unopened on the coffee table as Logan seemed engrossed in telling Bea his own story, and from afar, Rory monitored the curious and open tilt of his head as he jabbered away at his daughter in fading daylight. Bea burbled her own responses right back at him, her baby arms pumping with uncoordinated excitement and unmitigated glee at having her father's sole attention.

"And then I told that mean old lawyer that I didn't care if the author had subsidiary rights because it was his intellectual content, after all, and do you know what he told me? Do you know, Bea?"

Bea responded in what both her parents appeared to accept as the affirmative.

"Well, I'll tell you. He told me that everyone must be right about me wanting to burn this company to the ground, because it would never stay standing if I kept things up like this. A writer, owning their own thoughts! How dare I allow such madness!" Logan clapped Bea's hands together and then rolled them in a patty-cake motion. "I think he called me Junior under his breath too, but I can't swear to it." The baby bent her knees, doing a little shake with her hips. "That's okay, I'll have him fired," Logan paused, considering. "Nah, that's something Grandpa would have done. It was always his way or the highway, wasn't it?"

Rory marveled at how much the two actually did seem to be communicating with one another, to understand each other, considering only one of them was entirely verbal. She considered swooping in, reminding him that Bea was due for bed, but something stopped her, held her back. Pinned to where she stood in the shadows, her heart twinged with the idea that something still wasn't right, or solved.

If only Honor could see Logan and Bea the way that she did, the connection that the two of them had that was just theirs, there would be no way that anyone could believe that Logan didn't somehow feel whole.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Summary:

A day in Star's Hollow

Chapter Text

That weekend, Lorelai and Rory had driven to Woodbury in search of a movie featuring "any Ryan or Chris, we're not picky. But shirtless is preferable," as Lorelai had put it, leaving Luke and Logan in charge of the infant caretaking duties. Granted, Rory had also left an extensive and implicit list of baby-related instructions, reminding Luke that "it's not babysitting if it's your own child," at least four times, and generated a list of emergency numbers that rivaled the phone book, when it still existed. Rory's preparedness and apparent lack of faith in Logan's natural problem-solving skills appeared to amuse Luke to no end and gave Logan a little pit of burgeoning frustration somewhere in the vicinity of his digestive system.

After having to reject three suggested activities on the grounds that Rory's list had expressly forbidden them (taking Bea to the diner was out of the question due to the high heat of the kitchen; Gypsy had been diagnosed with the flu and Rory had forbidden seeing her or anyone who'd been in contact with her for the last 48 hours, which wiped out about a quarter of the Stars Hollow population; and lastly, they were not to go anywhere that Kirk was suspected to work or frequent. For Kirk-related reasons).

It didn't help that Luke kept rejecting ideas, too.

"The bookstore for afternoon reading time?"

"That cesspool of airborne diseases? No way."

"The pet store."

"Kirk. And roundworm. No."

"The aquarium."

Luke scowled. "Where would Star Hollow even _put_ an aquarium? Over the diner?" A look of distress crowded out the scowl. "Don't tell Taylor I even joked about that."

At a certain point, Logan decided to give up on Activity Roulette and amuse himself by watching Luke make his attempt at settling Bea into her regimented and list-approved nap. So far, Luke's process was a little different than Logan and Rory's bottle, burp, and sway method, and while Bea wasn't asleep by any stretch of the imagination, she seemed mostly relaxed and Logan didn't see any real need to intervene or correct him.

Except for the fact that with Luke occupying Bea, Logan was at loose ends and lately, any amount of idle time was time that felt as if Logan was a hair's breadth from spiraling right out of control. Over the past few weeks, Logan had been starting to feel as if he was suddenly wound too tightly and today was no different. "How about a walk? It's a beautiful day." Logan suggested, startling Luke out of the staring contest he was holding, and subsequently winning, with Bea. He wanted to walk so the quiet in living room felt less like having a plastic bag pulled over his head, suffocating him. "It's on the list after nap, but she never has to know if we do it out of order." Logan had a sneaking suspicion that Rory would absolutely know that he had veered from her proffered course, but he had to be able to think on his feet sometimes. He was never going to get better if he didn't practice.

Luke grunted what appeared to be agreement (or maybe just gas) and Logan dug his light jacket out of the jumble of various baby accoutrement they had carted over for the few hours they'd spend in Stars Hollow, as if they were fording the Connecticut River in a covered wagon instead of driving twenty three miles on the I-84 in a high performance automobile.

A walk would get them out of the house and relieve some of the pressure in his head, with he added bonus that Logan loved Stars Hollow as a town and as a microcosm. Being able to explore and find new signage for upcoming festivals and causes Taylor Doose was about to foist on an entire town of unsuspecting citizens was like Christmas to Logan. Any interaction with the town and its inhabitants was like walking through a live action role play with aliens dressed up to be actual human beings. These people couldn't actually exist in real life. Logan wanted to see copies of birth certificates, bank statements, credit histories-anything that would prove that Miss Patty didn't just land there in a space pod or that Babette wasn't some kind of replicant wearing the face and clothing of a middle-aged hippie.

Twenty minutes later, the two grown men were still attempting to properly prepare baby Lorelai for her trip outside. "Where'd you put the diapers?" Luke groused, overturning a box of wipes and accidentally tossing Bea's favorite blanket onto the floor. "She's wet again." He said, accusatory, as though Logan was the sole cause of the baby's active bladder. Okay, in Luke's defense, that _was_ the second diaper change in less than ten minutes, and the third costume change since Bea managed to show-off her best impression of Linda Blair in the Exorcist and projectile spit up her entire lunch on their first attempt to get out the front door.

"There's a really aptly named bag that we brought them in, Luke, I'm gonna guess they're in there, next to the couch." Logan pretended to ignore the under the breath grumping that Luke was producing because he was far busier trying to remember what the hell the trick was to this newfangled stroller. Scratching his head, Logan said more to himself than to his company, "Is it pull, then push, slide and then spin? Or spin, slide, pull, then push? When do I kick it across the room?"

Behind him, the plastic box of wipes clicked shut and the rustling sounds he heard appeared to be ones of progress. Luke and Bea appeared at his side, both peering suspiciously at him in judgment of his stroller-opening ineptitude. "You need a Master's degree to open that SOB, huh?" Logan didn't have a Master's degree, so he supposed so. He snapped his wrist in the third attempt to open and straighten the handlebar. It remained bent and closed. "Heh." Luke laughed.

A bead of sweat worked its way from Logan's hairline into the collar of his shirt and he banged himself in the shin with one of the still bent wheels. "We may have to call it," he announced, looking at his watch as if he was about to pronounce the afternoon walk dead on arrival.

"No, no, no," Luke pushed him out of the way with a hip as he handed Bea back over. "Lemme take a look at this thing, college boy."

Logan gladly stepped aside, Bea wriggling happily in his now tired arms, her sweater still damp from residual spit up. They cooed at each other for a few moments, both of them delighted to be reunited and Logan equally grateful that he'd been relieved of any and all mechanical related duties. He guessed then that he was not destined to be the fix-a-leak-under-your-sink or give-your-car-a-tune-up kind of dad. That's what Bea had Luke for, or why Logan had a healthy bank account and could pay someone to do it for them. Logan figured he'd be the call-your-Dad-at-3am-for-a-ride-when-you-drank-too-much-at-the-party-guy and he was absolutely fine with that. He knew his place. Their sweet reunion was interrupted when Bea's stomach made another gurgling noise and Logan helplessly listened to what was the unmistakable downloading of Bea's last meal into her diaper.

"Three diaper changes in twelve minutes, Bea. Really." He snorted and set about correcting the situation with practiced efficiency. After he'd painstakingly snapped her back into her dinosaur-themed outfit, Logan gingerly laid Bea into the portable play yard and went to tackle the increasingly obstinate stroller alongside his future father-in-law.

It was at least another fifteen minutes of hard fought manual labor until Logan was finally able to remember that the key to the stroller opening and locking safely in place was push, twist, spin, and then pull. Even as it sat in the living room in all its open and fully functional glory, it was hard to feel victorious.

Logan glanced over at Luke, who was doubled over from his efforts, hands clutching his thighs. "We're gonna have to start practicing this. Maybe do timed trials, some drills," he panted. When he saw the look of abject horror on Logan's face, Luke cracked the tiniest of smiles. "I had you going for a minute there, didn't I?"

"No." Logan swiped the back of his hand across his brow, struggling to catch his own breath after swinging a bulky fifty pound mound of metal and fabric over his head for a half an hour. His lungs were on fire. "No. I think we could use it."

With the baby finally bundled inside, the two worked together to maneuver the stroller down the front steps and to the sidewalk. Luke navigated what he claimed to be the most advantageous and efficient route, which was probably just the one furthest from places Taylor Doose would likely be, which was fine because even though Taylor fascinated Logan, he was mentally and physically exhausted and wouldn't have been able to properly enjoy the potential interaction. Or run interference for Luke while he had one. They ambled quietly down Main Street, neither man feeling any great need to fill the silence with chatter, although Bea seemed content verbalizing nonsensically to herself within her stroller. The streets were lined with banners and signs announcing the upcoming Firelight Festival, and he made a mental note to ask Rory if they could visit for it. Town festivals were prime people watching time, and Logan never tired of gawking at Stars Hollowans, ever.

They walked for a few minutes, paused for a passing car, and once safely across the street, Logan found himself being magnetically drawn to land in front of a grand white two story house, the front porch lined with doric columns. The home was close enough to the sidewalk that he felt like he was looking in the front window and but somehow, it still wasn't quite close enough. Luke, who brought up the rear as he pushed Bea's stroller, nudged up next to him. "It sure has good bones, doesn't it?"

"Sorry?"

"The house, there." Luke sighed, tone wistful. "The columns, the brick. You know, I bought it once, for Lorelai. It was a huge mistake and I almost lost her over it, but damn, that house has good bones." Logan decided not to point out how downright mushy Luke was becoming, since lately, he didn't have much room to talk. He'd cried actual tears at a chewing gum commercial the week before and when Rory had caught him, he'd had to claim allergies, which then resulted in an unfortunate trip to the allergist for a painful scratch test and several shots. If there was more or less crying after that, he couldn't honestly say.

But Luke was right. The house as a structure was beautiful, but it would have been even more perfect if his daughter and his wife were inside. Logan looked carefully over at the other man, who was still a little lost in thought. "It feels like a house that needs a family to fill it."

Granted, the idea of moving that much closer to Lorelai gave Logan heartburn and trepidation in equal measure but if it might somehow make Rory happier, that was really the only business Logan was ever in these days. And it wasn't like he planned on having Taylor Doose over once a week for poker and beers, although he supposed that he _could_ , but it was more that he liked the idea of having the option open.

"That's what I thought, too." Luke harrumphed a little, eyes downcast. Logan watched with a kind of morbid fascination as Luke appeared to fight back and push down some kind of important internal conflict before he schooled his features and gave the stubble on his chin a thoughtful scratch. "Must be something about the columns. For being ancient, those columns sure send some kind of message about the future."

"They do, don't they?" Logan stood in place a moment longer, the seed of an idea sowing itself somewhere in the back of his brain. Emily had generously postponed the sale of the house and allowed Rory and Logan to stay in the Gilmore home while Rory finished her novel, but it was never meant to be a permanent solution. It was only supposed to be a placeholder until he or Rory made a decision that didn't somehow get made for them by sheer force of circumstance. But for whatever reason, they were still a little stuck on that front.

They lived with a lot of ghosts already, the ways things were. So it might have been nice to make a fresher start. Live somewhere that was only theirs. Maybe that was why he'd been feeling somewhat out of sorts.

Which made little or no sense to him, since he and Rory were as strong as they'd ever been, Bea was healthy and perfect, and where he'd planted roots had never seemed to matter much to him before.

Bea started to fuss before Logan could delve too deeply into the ways that he couldn't possibly stay stationary, and Bea's legs bicycled in the air as she expressed her imminent displeasure. Luke, at least, seemed to have had the wherewithal to shake off whatever introspection had just befallen him and started back down the sidewalk and away from the giant white house. The movement succeeded in taming Bea's sudden tantrum, and the out and out wailing was soon reduced to little squeals and even some sweet cooing as Luke made his way back toward home.

By the time the two men had reached the crosswalk, Bea's eyes were already closed with the start of a peaceful sleep, and Luke turned to Logan, his mouth opening and closing like he was thinking of something important to say but constantly thinking better of it. "Be patient with her, okay?"

"She's a baby, she cries. I'm used to it." Logan tried to wring the _duh_ out of his tone, but he wasn't sure how well he succeeded.

Luke frowned down at him, irritated. "No, not Bea. Rory."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Luke scratched at the back of his neck, obviously perturbed that he was tiptoeing down this road, let alone travelling it. "She's...you guys…" Logan temporarily worried that Luke was short-circuiting and he'd have to reboot him there on the sidewalk. "You and Rory, I know you love each other, even if you two are idiots about it sometimes. It's impossible not to love this one," he pointed down at the sleeping baby in the stroller, her fists thrown up by her head. "And I keep telling Lor-I mean, it's not your fault that Christopher was a selfish p-r-i-c-k who didn't know his a-s-s from his elbow."

Between the spelling bee and the sentiment, it was hard not to stop in his tracks. "Excuse me?" A spare bottle fell out of the diaper bag and clattered to the pavement, rolling to a stop underneath the basket of the stroller.

"You aren't responsible for his mistakes and I know that both Lorelai and Rory have this tendency to lump all privileged white dudes into one—-I mean, he definitely made some messes in his time but to not even," Luke looked around the street a little wildly as if he wasn't able to control all the words that were suddenly emerging from his face and maybe if there were reinforcements heading his way, they might help out. "Water under the bridge." He shook his head and swiped a large hand over his face. Luke was still sweating. Understandably so with all the emotional chitchat. It was making Logan equally clammy and he really only had the vaguest notion of what the hell Luke was talking about. "I'm glad you two found your way back to each other."

Logan made the decision at that moment that fatherhood, and by extension, grandfatherhood had the universal tendency to soften even the gruffest of men. "I appreciate the sup—"

Maybe Luke didn't even require Logan's presence for the rest of the conversation because he launched onward without acknowledging Logan's previous response. "And how much you love Rory, it doesn't really matter - don't get me wrong, but all of this is work. You can't just build the house and expect them to come. They want to pick out the paint colors and the fabrics and the weird overstuffed couches…"

"Is this still a metaphor, Luke, or am I really buying a house right now?" Logan asked, confused. He'd handled Rory's pregnancy hormones, and her postpartum ones, he should certainly have been able to handle those of a diner owner in his fifties with a vested interest in the success of his and Rory's relationship.

"It's a metaphor, man, keep up. You gotta let her lead. You follow."

"Okay, first it was houses and now it's dancing. The lesson's getting muddled."

Luke glared at him from under his baseball cap. "I don't have to help you at all."

"I didn't know I needed help!" Logan threw up his hands in defeat and Bea made a little burbling noise in her sleep. He lowered his voice as not to wake the slumbering baby. "Luke, I don't know what we're talking about anymore. Help me out here."

"What we're talking about," Logan could hear Taylor in the distance instructing Kirk on how to properly hang a Chinese lantern. It was clearly making Luke more agitated than he already was, but it gave him the final push he needed to spit out whatever it was that was stuck in his head, "What we're talking about is that a family isn't born, it's made, and for Rory and Bea's sakes, I don't want you to have to learn that the hard way."

Logan didn't want to have to learn anything the hard way either, but it didn't change the fact that he wasn't sure what exactly he was supposed to be learning.

"So how's tricks?" Lorelai handed Rory a heaping bucket of buttered and salted popcorn, tucking the bills of her change back into her overstuffed purse.

"Writing is hard. Babies are hard. Rory tired. No words."

"Eloquent as ever, my babushka. That Yale education has really paid off, hasn't it?" Lorelai swung an arm around Rory's shoulders, checked her with a hip as they made their way to the self-serve stations. "You know, my mother is doing that passive-aggressive 'It's really a seller's market,' right now thing about the house, so if you and Logan had any inkling on when you'd be ready to zip-a-dee-doo-dah your way into a new place of your own, I'd love to be the one to deliver the news."

Rory sighed. "We haven't even talked about it." Well, they occasionally complained that the house seemed impossible to baby proof and that they felt too far away from Luke and Lorelai, but no one had really done anything about it.

"You might want to. I mean, no rush. But rush." The ice machine clattered loudly enough to drown out any protest, so Rory didn't. "You guys seem happy. Not well-rested, but happy."

Rory found herself practically chumming the water of her mother's wide open sea when her tone betrayed even the slightest whiff of hesitation. "Of course."

 _Damnit._ An eyebrow rose. "Hmm?"

"What? No. Yes. We are. Both of those things. He's so good with Bea. So so good. A lifesaver."

"But?" Lorelai had Rory cornered by the concession's Coke Freestyle machine, a straw bitten between her teeth as she wrestled to get the plastic lid onto the full cup.

 _But there's something he's not telling me and if I tell you, you'll say I told you so, so I can't say anything at all._

Ugh, she hated giving her mother any inkling that Logan possessed any weakness, even if it was completely and wholly understandable, given his history. His parents were truly nightmare people both as individuals and in tandem and he'd flourished in spite of them, not because of them. Raising a child was definitely going to activate some insecurities, even in the healthiest of relationships. "His sister thinks he's depressed. Or something. She never used the word, but she thinks something is off. And I've been skulking around looking for signs, and he's just...he's not depressed."

Lorelai chucked the straw paper into the garbage can and collected an impressively unnecessary pile of napkins from the concession as they walked toward their assigned theater. "I'm about to suggest something that is completely revolutionary and maybe it's because I just watched this whole infomercial about people who used it and just raved about it...it's called a conversation. I know, I know, it sounds b-a-n-a-n-a-s but it seems nutty enough that it just might work." Rory threw her mother a dirty look. "If Honor knows him pretty well, instead of Nancy Drew-ing it, why don't you just say something, hon?"

"I don't want to spook him." It wasn't that she thought that Logan's place in her life was tenuous, but maybe his patience for intrusion was.

"Ah, the unbridled mystique of Logan Huntzberger strikes again." Lorelai mused. "Rory, he loves you. He's been honest with you. To a fault. Say something."

"It's not like he's shooting up in the bathroom. He's quiet. He might just be...quiet."

"Then if there's nothing to say, there's nothing to say. Logan doesn't strike me as someone who minds a conversation. Maybe you're just so used to these extremes in relationships that maybe you're the one having trouble with steady. Take it from someone who once hiked for up to five feet to clear their own head. Sometimes it's you, not them."

A fresh wave of horror ran through Rory's bloodstream. What if _she_ was the problem? Logan wouldn't admit it, not if it meant disruption, because she knew in her heart that of hearts that Logan wouldn't do anything if it meant endangering Bea's stability in any way. But it also meant that he'd overcompensate for whatever he thought wasn't there, and that would lead to a newer and fresher disaster.

It took most of the movie for Rory to come to the conclusion that it wasn't the asking that frightened her, but more the answer, and she still wasn't certain that she was willing to risk it. Some days it felt like they were clinging onto this narrow thread that was holding the whole thing together, and she certainly didn't want to be the one to pull and unravel it.

Back at the house, Luke extracted two beers from the refrigerator and popping off the caps with a practiced hand, he offered one to Logan. "You deserve it, man."

Logan took a deep pull and almost spit the frothy liquid back out onto the floor. It wasn't skunky at all; it just tasted like something he wasn't quite prepared to taste. Like when you pick up your coffee and but you get orange juice instead. "What is this? Mango?"

Luke shook his head. Thank God, Logan thought. "Nope, guava."

"What the…" Logan looked down at the brightly colored label and !Guava Libre! stared up at him. His brain was having difficulty processing the visual input. "Huh. Guava." Logan took another experimental sip and swished it around his tongue and into his cheeks. It wasn't terrible, it was just _surprising_. The beer itself was creamy, with a crisp tropical taste and a hint of..."Is that vanilla?"

Luke rolled his eyes and looked a little pained as he nodded. "Listen, it's possible that Lorelai bought it as a joke or a science experiment or maybe she wasn't wearing her cheaters down at Doose's. All I know is that I drank it accidentally and I don't know if they've drugged it or if it caused some sort of taste bud-related dementia, but I just keep going back for more." Luke eyed Logan over his bottle of fancy beer like one or both of them had just committed a crime and they were still standing over the bodies holding the murder weapons. Logan didn't have the nerve to mention that Luke was the one who handed him the stuff so he wasn't sure why he was the one on trial. "And if you tell anyone about this, I will have Cesar disembowel you with a rusty spoon."

There were few things that he believed more fully than Luke's threat. He gulped loudly. "Understood."

Luke wordlessly clinked the neck of his bottle against Logan's in a pact of solidarity and hopefully easily avoidable future homicide. Finding his legs, Logan took another swig before he went to settle Bea in her portable play yard for the rest of her nap and Luke stayed behind in the kitchen to pour bags of chips and pretzels into a bowl for a pre-dinner snack. Setting the snacks down on the coffee table, Luke settled onto the larger sofa and turned the sound up on a football game that Logan only half-paid attention to while he finished the first new weird beer and started on a second.

Before he made the mistake of asking Luke what exactly about his demeanor or mood seemed to cry _Dr. Phil me!_ , Rory and her mother came whipping through the front door on what was clearly the crest of their traditional movie-going sugar high. Lorelai entered the house in a flurry of high fructose corn syrup and pizza orders, and before the call was complete, Luke was already grumbling under his breath about someone developing scurvy when he realized no vegetables were being mentioned. Logan sprang up from his seat as if Rory had just caught him lustfully canoodling with a bottle of too fruity beer (which she kind of had) and his legs went out from underneath him as Rory tackled him against the sofa in a half-hug, half-nelson of a greeting.

Still clutching a mammoth bag of popcorn from the theater, Rory shook it under Logan's nose while she tucked herself under his arm and burrowed into his chest. She smelled like butter and sugar and that rose hips shampoo that she always used, and he wanted to do more than plant a chaste kiss near the side of her lips. It wasn't enough.

"How was the movie, Ace?" Logan kissed her nose, then dipped his head to nip lightly just below the divot on her chin. He'd take whatever G-rated fun he could get at this point.

"Fantastic. We're changing your daughter's name to Gosling in his honor." Lorelai interjected from near the portable bassinet, popping a pretzel into her mouth and tipping down to check in on her granddaughter with a crunch loud enough to potentially wake her.

"Great. I'll call the lawyers." Logan turned back to Rory. "Hi."

"Heya handsome." She leaned closer, licking her lips and staring down at his with a look that shot an electrical current straight down his spine. "I missed you."

"Apparently I missed Gosling." He kissed her again, soft and maybe a little too lingering for parental unit proximity.

Rory pulled away slowly, equal parts starry-eyed and puzzled. "Is that...do you taste like mangos?"

"It's guav-" Logan started to say, but over Rory's head, Luke was making a particularly menacing slashing gesture at his own throat, eyes wide with warning. "It's a new chapstick I'm trying."

"Okay, Ryan Seacrest, you may want to lay off the tropical Lip Smackers for a little bit, they're strong." Rory leaned in to press her lips to his and pulled away as she licked at the flavor she'd pulled from his mouth. "No, on second thought…" She went back in for a third and Logan swiftly pulled the nearest throw pillow - the embroidered faces of the Golden Girls staring up at him, beseeching him - onto his lap.

"Rory," he muttered into her mouth with a groan. "We gotta stop. I'm gonna embarrass myself. More than usual."

Rory pretended to pout, but it felt comfortable and familiar, and like something he only had the barest chance of screwing up. He and Rory would be fine because of (or maybe in spite of, he still wasn't quite sure) the way that they felt about each other, and there wasn't much he wouldn't do to keep it that way.


	4. Chapter 4

Rory and Logan were both quiet as Bea dozed in the backseat and no one in the car was willing to risk waking her, even if it meant forty-five minutes of comfortable silence and the chance that she'd be awake and ready to face the day at a way too early 3 a.m. Instead of idle chat and about seventeen different conversations Rory had intended to start, she'd settled for sliding her hand over to Logan's as it rested on the gearshift, and threading her fingers through his for the rest of the drive.

At home, Logan unloaded the car as Rory tiptoed a still snoozing Bea into her crib and reunited with Logan in the kitchen as she brewed a pot of coffee to keep her nightly writing schedule alert and on track.

Rory would fully admit to still floating in her own little bubble when Logan slung a warm arm around her neck, pulling her close. Even if Bea hadn't been a human faultline that they'd been intent on not disturbing, she somehow doubted that Logan would have been completely participatory in any conversation topic she'd offered. Throughout dinner with her mom and Luke, he'd been uncharacteristically somber and pensive, and even when he'd glimpsed his own Stars Hollow bromance partner Taylor Doose out on his nightly walk, Logan had barely even waved. Rory tugged at Logan's chin, rubbing a circle into his newly growing whiskers with her thumb, and pulled his gaze down to meet hers. The brown eyes that met hers were tired, maybe even a little sad. "Hey."

"Hey yourself."

Rory moved her thumb so that it trained up Logan's sharp jawline, and he nestled his cheek into her palm. The movement itself gave her an odd sense of relief, of protection.

"So what did you and Luke get up to today? Did you two accomplish a lot of manly feats?"

Logan shot her puzzled look. "You mean after the log roll and the thing where you pull a semi-cab with your teeth? We participated in some light pugilism, yes." His lips curved up in a smile and something wistful passed through his expression. "We went on a walk around town and Luke may have given me his version of the Ghost of Christmas Future or the Boulevard of Broken Dreams speech, I'm not quite sure. I don't think he was sure either. It felt...unplanned."

"I'm sure it was very…"

"Awkward, yes. Very. But I survived and live to tell the tale. Or at least hit the highlights, which definitely included the part where he spelled out the word prick and then told me that I have to let you lead."

"It wasn't the sex talk was it? Oh my God, Luke gave you a sex talk." She covered her face with her hands.

"First of all, the fact that I'm not in a catatonic state right now should indicate that your stepfather and I did not discuss any matters of a sexual nature this afternoon, and second, just no. God, no." He seemed to shiver involuntarily. "Rory. God. The mouth on you."

"Well, there were body parts spelled and I don't know, it just seemed-" See, he was fine. He was laughing and joking and only slightly traumatized by the mental images she'd just accidentally inflicted upon him. So it would be fine if she just asked him straight up. "If you - you can tell me if you need something, you know that, right?" Well, kind of straight up. All these years and she still wasn't great at direct confrontation.

Logan's eyebrow quirked as his smile slowly faded. "Hmm."

Rory could sense the exact moment that Logan's defenses began to rear up, his spine tensing beneath her fingers. She was going to have act quickly if she didn't want him galloping off into the night. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss away a crease that had landed between his eyebrows. "You okay?"

"Rory." Logan extracted himself from her hold and set about prepping that evening's bottles, opening and closing cabinet doors with forced efficiency.

"There's nothing bothering you, right?"

He stood at the stove, the saucepan poised over the gas range. "You poking around for something specific there, Ace, cause we haven't played a game of Twenty Questions this prolific in a while. And just in case, no, it isn't bigger than a breadbox."

"You're annoyed with me." Rory crossed to meet him where he was, boxing him against the countertop with her hip. "Don't be annoyed with me."

Logan ducked a little as she reached up to smooth at his cheek, "Ace, I'm not annoyed with you." He reached for an empty bottle, examining the heaping measuring scoop with excess rigor. "It's been a long day and I still have to look over those presentation details for tomorrow and you have a deadline. Plus, these bottles aren't going to make themselves, I forgot to pay the formula fairies this month."

"No, I know-" Rory could feel the heat rising to her cheeks and she couldn't decide if it was embarrassment or anger or some kind of hybrid of both. "Logan. Just." She gently placed her own hand over his where it rested on the counter next to the cylinder of formula that he was digging into with a slightly too fervent bent. "Just stop, for one second. Look at me. Be with me."

He sighed, but there was a marked difference in the rigidity of his shoulders as he stepped toward her. Whatever it was, it was going to be okay, and he was going to be okay because Logan was always okay, just like Honor had said. "It's late, Ace." His voice was soft, calm, and his gaze finally lifted to meet hers.

"I know." She gently extricated the scoop from his hand, pushed the bottle he was filling toward the back of the counter. "I'll get these. You go finish up your work and turn in, okay? I'll get the first wake up, I promise."

To her surprise, he didn't argue. Didn't renegotiate. Just leaned down to kiss her, his lush golden eyelashes brushing her cheek. "Night, Ace. Don't stay up too late."

She hugged him then, something quick and fierce, and she didn't miss the initial way that he'd drawn back a little, as he'd been startled. "I love you, Logan."

Another parting kiss landed on the furrow between her eyes. "I love you too, Ace." That smile met his eyes, soft and warm and true. "I'm sorry if I'm a little," he mimed the Psycho knife stabbing motion complete with sound effects, "I don't mean to be."

"You're tired." Rory repeated, more for her own comfort than his.

Logan sighed. "Mmm-hmm." He rolled his head over his shoulders as if he was shaking off a fog and before her eyes, Rory watched as Logan reinstated the mask of what always seemed to pass as casual detachment. "What was on your mind though, Ace? Is it a now thing or a later thing?"

"Later. Don't worry about it." She paused, searching for a cover. "I've just been thinking that maybe we should probably start thinking about a move, y'know? Not that the Gilmore Palace hasn't been kind to us, but—"

Logan stopped at the bottom step, turned back to look Rory in the eye. "That's starting to be a real theme with people today. But I wouldn't mind a shot at our own place, Ace."

Her mood buoyed a little then. Maybe it was exhaustion, mixed with work stress, smothered in temporary living situation ennui that was making Logan seem not like himself. Maybe it was a simple fix after all. "I'll call the realtor in the morning and get something set up," she said to his retreating back as she hurried through the rest of the nightly bottle prep to join her sleeping family upstairs.

The alarm clock read 1:13 a.m. and Logan was still awake, having gotten up at least five times in the short time he'd been laying down. It had been the same way the night before and the night before that, and if he stopped to analyze the pattern, it had probably been happening consistently that way for at least two weeks, probably more.

Vigilance, was what it was. That little niggling feeling in the back of his head that crept its way under his skin and convinced him that he couldn't stay where he was, relying blithely on the rudimentary mechanics of the baby monitor. He needed to get up get up get up go check. He'd found out the few times that he had tried to ignore the creeping voice that he wasn't able to even pretend to sleep unless he had seen with his own eyes that Bea was okay, that she was still breathing, that she was safe.

In a weird way, there was comfort in the routine of it. The weight of the duvet as he flung off his side, the soft whumpf as it landed on the obliviously slumbering Rory. The pile of the nylon carpet plush beneath his bare feet as he tiptoed out of bed and down the short hallway to the nursery. The familiar powdery scent that wafted toward him as he pushed through the already ajar door and the familiar shadow of the unicorn night light as it danced against the freshly painted walls. Once he'd reassured himself that Bea was breathing, that her skin was warm but not too warm and the rise and fall of her chest was consistent and deep and enough, he would typically cross back to the open door and find his way down the darkened hallway and slide undetected back into bed. On this trip, however, something had kept him from slipping back out, some unnamed force that urged him to slide down to sit at the foot of his daughter's crib, the oaken slats digging into his shoulder blades and his heart rapping a drumbeat against his ribcage. Ten minutes. Ten minutes I'll sit here and make sure she's okay. Ten minutes and I'm back in bed, curled around Rory. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes passed and still he sat. She's fine. She's doing that little snore and she's breathing and she's fine. Unless that snore is because her airway is obstructed… And he'd be up again, adjusting her sleep sack so it was nowhere near her face and smoothing his hand over her downy hair and convincing himself everything was fine.

Because everything was fine.

Everything but him.


	5. Chapter 5

It was next to impossible to get any work done.

Rory hadn't been back in front of her laptop for more than thirty seconds when the doorbell and the landline (which she had repeatedly insisted was completely unnecessary but no one could seem to figure out how to convince the phone company of that fact and cancel the stupid thing) started to ring simultaneously.

It had already been a weird morning. The internet was acting irrationally spotty while Rory had been trying to email revisions to her editor and as the hours ticked by, Bea steadfastly refused to succumb to her extremely routine and beyond needed morning nap. Rory hadn't been able to put the baby down for more than seconds at a time without receiving an irritated response that ranged from soft whimpering mewl to Category Five tornadic siren, and the ringing phone only exacerbated the cacophonous experience. And to begin the morning's weirdness and really kind of set the tone, Logan had disappeared from their bed at some point in the night and Rory had finally located him curled half-underneath Bea's crib, a tiny pink blanket pulled tight across his broad shoulders, knees crammed into his own rib cage for warmth. When she'd tried to address with him what she'd just encountered, he'd jovially kissed her nose, pushed a fresh cup of coffee into her hand and before she knew what was happening, was off to work in a puff of sandalwood cologne and a promise to be home before dinner. Like nothing had ever happened.

Tripping over one of Bea's discarded toys, Rory made her way to the foyer to discover the identity and nature of her most recent unannounced, and frankly, unwelcome visitor. It didn't appear to be anyone with a pamphlet wanting to discuss her chances at a happy afterlife or a man with a box of knives for sale. Plus, as she peered out the side window, she could see the US Postal Service van parked on an incline in the driveway, so it probably wasn't a serial killer. When she opened the door, it wasn't their usual postman, Sully, but instead an unfamiliar disgruntled-looking postal employee in a navy jacket with a USPS patch on the shoulder and dark slacks. Rory quickly signed for the registered letter and as the postman left without comment, she listened as another nameless lawyer left yet another important sounding message she knew Logan had no intention of listening to, let alone returning. The estate lawyers were certainly a dogged bunch, and Logan's ability to evade them was probably beginning to be the stuff of legend around the estate lawyer water cooler. People just didn't dodge their own inheritance. But Logan Huntzberger clearly wasn't people.

"They're still calling." Rory announced unhelpfully to Lane on the phone a few minutes later. She'd originally intended to call Lane to firm up some lunch plans for while Logan was out of the country, but when she'd texted Logan about the calls and the letters, and he'd only texted back, "K," Rory decided the call to Lane would also double as a bitch fest. It wasn't something she loved doing, talking about Logan behind his back to her friends, but his response was such another clear avoidance tactic that she was going to have to temporarily abandon some simple personal principles. Which she didn't exactly love, but unfortunately, the good people at Apple hadn't yet invented a _throttling your loved one_ (or, for everyone's benefit, a _cramming your shattered iPhone down the throat of your beloved because he refuses to communicate like a human)_ emoji to convey the precise nature of her displeasure and airing her dirty laundry to her oldest friend seemed the next best thing.

"I don't know who _they_ are, Rory." It was just after lunch and Rory could hear the twins playing a particularly loud video game in the background. Or maybe it was Zach home on a day off of work. It was hard to tell some days. "Who even calls people nowadays? Telemarketers?"

"No, not them. The lawyers."

"He still hasn't met with them?" It had been over a year. The anniversary of the plane crash had come and gone and if Logan had acknowledged it, Rory couldn't tell. She could definitely tell that he was avoiding other obligations, though, if the stack of unsigned legal documents in Logan's desk drawer was any indication. Rory didn't think it was a good idea to talk to her mother about any of it, because she didn't feel like admitting another way in which she and Logan didn't seem to be communicating, and Lane was maybe the least judgemental person Rory knew. Years of Mrs. Kim's obsessive white-knuckled control combined with the eternal hell fires of damnation school of Korean mothering had really given Lane the ability to be aggressively reasonable when it came to everyone else's issues.

"No. It's like if he closes his eyes, he thinks they'll go away. This last message sounds like they need a decision about the house, pronto."

"You mean the castle on the hill? It's just sitting empty?"

Rory shrugged and fiddled with the phone cord. Her grandmother still had phones that came with cords and Rory had half a mind to sell one on Ebay as an antique. "Honor still has a staff there, keeping up appearances. But she isn't any less tight-lipped about all things Huntzberger, and it's almost like if they both pretend nothing happened, it will all just go away. Mutual ignoring, I guess, but I sure don't understand it. They need closure. Plus, who doesn't want a zillion dollars deposited in their bank account?"

"People who already have a zillion dollars in their bank accounts, usually. You know, if Logan doesn't want it, Zach and I are completely open to donations. A double college fund is tax deductible, remind him."

Rory laughed. "I'm sure he'd be happy to donate."

Lane was silent for a long moment and Rory could picture her carefully parsing out her next few words. "But it has to be hard for him, ya know? His parents were-"

"No, I know." The reality was, Logan had lived under the long shadow of Huntzberger obligation for more than thirty-five years and sometimes he threw off those shackles, and sometimes they absolutely dragged him down. Even after everything was said and done, Rory really don't know how Logan ultimately _felt_ about Mitchum and Shira, other than they frustrated him, and most of the time it seemed like they wanted him to be someone other than himself. When himself was pretty freaking awesome. She loved him for all the things that they were always trying to change, and it had to have been way more confusing for Logan than it ever was for Rory. "That's the thing, though. It doesn't have to _be_ complicated. He wouldn't even have to keep the money, even if he got it. He could pour it back into the company or put it in a trust for Bea. Hell, he could give his half away or start some sort of foundation, that would really stick it to their memory."

"Nothing says revenge like cramming charitable giving into the faces of the deceased," Lane sighed, and either Steve or Kwan cheered incongruously in the background, "I might never understand rich people, Rory."

"Me neither." She grumbled, and added _avoidance_ to Logan's growing list of of uncharacteristic behaviors. "But clearly what he resists persists. And keeps persisting. Like a venereal disease meets a Jehovah's Witness meets Paris Geller when she's read an op-ed about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act."

"Wow, that is seriously aggressive. But let's not forget that they are lawyers, and lawyers pretty much eat money for breakfast. I'm surprised they aren't jumping out of planes and parachuting onto the roof of your house right now with contracts and fountain pens."

At that, the landline began to ring again and Bea, who hadn't been napping, but had at least been quiet, started to fuss again at the commotion. Rory groaned. "I hear the pitter-patter of lawyer feet, I gotta go."

It wasn't a lawyer, but instead one of the administrative assistants that worked for Logan, reminding Rory about Logan's upcoming international flight and the fact that he had no clue where his passport was, could she please look into it for him as he had a late meeting. But before she could trudge upstairs to start tearing apart the closet to search out the suit jacket pocket he'd inevitably left it in, Bea was boisterously making her hunger known.

At just after six, Logan clattered through the front door, his work satchel bouncing off the top of his knee. His hair was windblown and if Rory looked too closely, his eyes were a little bloodshot, but the line of his shoulders and the sight of his boyish face still made her stomach do a little flip flop every time he walked through the door. She'd watch him walk through a thousand doors, for a living, if it meant she always had that low static thrum under her skin whenever he crossed a threshold. He unloaded his briefcase, threw his jacket over the banister and made his way into the living room where he leaned down over the back of the couch to nip her on the top of the head with a kiss. "How're my girls?" Logan asked as he collapsed into a heap next to Rory on the sofa. He smelled like coffee and burning leaves and the mint gum he always chewed to cover up the stale coffee, and as he landed, he knocked her laptop sideways. "Oopsie daisy."

Rory gave him a sideways glare as she righted her computer. "We've been better."

Logan leaned into her space further, tipping his forehead against hers. He knew she was powerless to that maneuver and they were close enough then that she could taste the caffeine on his breath. "Can I help?" He pressed his lips to hers, and she could feel the tension seeping out of her shoulders as her lips softened underneath his. Damnit, he was gonna kiss _the call the lawyers_ lecture right out of her. That wily son of a gun.

"Bea's in a terrible mood." Rory mumbled into Logan's mouth.

He pulled a few centimeters back, but not enough that his features were discernible in her line of sight. "I'll get her," Logan said, still way up in Rory's space, and showing no signs of retreat. Not that she wanted him to, because even as exhausted and frustrated as she was, she still wanted him close. Close and happy and attentive. "You rest. Or work. Or restfully work. Some combination of the two. I'll take Bea duty." Rory stomach growled. "And I'll order Chinese. Because I'm just that good." He lingered over her lips for a few minutes longer, his weight mostly balanced on his forearms as he attempted to wrest himself away from what was turning into a leisurely makeout session on the sofa.

Rory held him in place with a hand placed strategically along the back of his neck, and basked in the affectionate glow for a few minutes longer. It was times like these, when it was so clear that she was absolutely head over heels in love with Logan, that she'd get a little pang that reminded her that she almost never got him back. That she'd sent him away, again, and it was just misfortune that had re-inserted him in her life. Well, she'd like to think that eventually she would have come to her senses, that she would have had the guts to call and tell him about the baby, but the way things had been going for her last year, it didn't seem near likely enough. Sometimes the regret could land on her like a helicopter and apparently, this was one of those times. Rory found herself pulling away, extracting herself to try to shake off the idea that Logan almost married someone else, a person that he did not expressly love, because Rory had essentially abandoned the idea that they could ever be... _this_. Exactly what they were. "Hi."

"Well, hello." Logan's lips were pink and kiss-bitten and just the slightest bit swollen, and she stroked her thumb over his bottom lip with a gentle glide. "A penny for your thoughts, Ace?"

She didn't think it was wise to hand them over for all the money in his wallet (or his bank account) but sometimes it was enough for her to acknowledge that that's what it was; a pang of regret for lost time and now they were exactly where they were meant to be. He was the father of her child and they were engaged and everyone's life had gone sideways, not just hers. Yeah, it was an utterly selfish thought to have, but she'd spent so long feeling doomed to a life of _almost_ and _not quite_ that just having things somewhat settled felt like a victory in itself. Logan was hers. She was his, and there was no one in the middle.

"Just glad you're mine, is all."

Logan smiled, positioning himself so that his arm ran across her shoulders, and gently yet forcefully slotted her into his side. "You might want to tell that to your thousand-yard stare, Ace."

She dropped her head onto his shoulder and wondered if it would possible for them to just stay in that spot, on that couch, forever. It felt completely plausible. The baby might learn to walk eventually and she could join them. "I love you."

Logan rubbed reassuringly at her shoulder then ducked in to peck at the side of her neck, then her earlobe. "I love you, too, Ace. Did my doctor call or something? Is it a tumor?"

"You always make a joke like that when I tell you how I feel about you." Rory complained.

"You always tell me how you feel about me when another shoe is about drop, is all."

"That's patently untrue."

"It's at least partially true, or else I wouldn't make those jokes. There is truth in comedy, Rory."

"Okay Shecky Greene, while we're being so truthful, I need to talk to you about these incessant lawyering calls."

Logan shuddered, maybe a little involuntarily. "Ugh, Rory, I'm sorry. I thought I'd put more of the fear of Huntzberger into them about bothering my wife and child at home. Persistent little buggers, aren't they?"

Rory nodded and snuggled deeper into Logan's chest. She forgot how nice it sounded to be called his wife even though they weren't yet official. Logan's heart was beating at a rapid clip and she put her hand flat on his chest as if that might help to calm it. "It's hard for you, I know, but it's not...it won't go away."

Logan took a deep inhale like he was about to launch into a plethora of reasons why it wasn't all that difficult and it was really just a circumstantial occurrence that he'd missed eleven hundred and seven calls about his parents' estate and its division when Bea began to bleat out cries of dissatisfaction across the baby monitor. "I'll get her. Hold that thought."

She didn't though, because she could hear Logan murmuring to Bea about giving Mommy a break and did she want to go for a walk to look at the late fall foliage and before Rory could even remember what it was that she was wanting to address, Logan was covering her with a throw blanket as she dozed on the sofa. Bea was strapped to his chest in her baby carrier, and Logan and their daughter both gazed down at her from above with matching semi-concerned expressions. "Sleep," Logan said, as he smoothed his palm over Bea's flyaway hair, her lips set in a studious bow. "We'll be back bearing Chinese."

Logan was true to his word. The house was quiet and still for a time, but once the moo shu pork and sweet and sour chicken had been demolished, the dishes washed and put away, Bea was back to her previous fussing.

Truly, no one in the house seemed particularly settled into their nightly routine.

"I'll play you for it." Logan bounced his closed fist against his flat, open palm. They'd both taken several turns feeding, rocking and changing the baby, even tag-teaming a warm bubble bath, and nothing seemed to prevail over her discomfort. "One, two, three," Logan clapped his closed fist against his palm, "shoot!" and threw 'paper', clearly hoping that Rory would stick with her usual pattern of literally alternating rock, paper, and scissors as she did whenever they played. He looked up at her in mock disgust when she'd held out her two fingers in a vee, "Oh, come on! Best two out of three?"

Rory shook her head. "It's your turn, Logan. Don't shirk."

"Shirk? I am not shirking. I just think that I might actually be making her angrier right now. The last time I went in there, she gave me the _look_."

"What look?"

"You know the one."

Rory bit back a smile. "I know the one?"

"You must. You taught it to her."

"Logan, she's five months old. She has three moods: happy, not quite as happy, and gassy. There was no _look_."

"Okay, fine. There was no look. It was an expression, then, a countenance. I'll fall on your thesaurus, m'lady." Logan did a jaunty bow and Rory rolled her eyes. "Is it so hard to believe that our daughter would portray an emotion via her beautiful, tiny face, even as I was unfastening her diaper?"

"You're being obtuse."

"Am not. You know I'm as acute as a button."

Rory groaned. Luke had to have taught him more dad jokes the last time they visited.

"I know she's angry with me, Rory, because when I was changing her diaper, I happened to glance down at her, and she was hard core giving me the dimples." He said it like their five month old had been casually flipping him the bird.

"Hard core, you say."

"Yes, hard core." Logan said, almost defensive. He looked a little sheepish at her clear amusement with his word choice. "What? I learned it from the youths."

"Ah, the youths." Rory crossed her arms over her chest. This day was shoving itself over the hill of _weird_ and straight into the valley of _absurd._ "What on earth are you talking about. First of all, the dimples are cute, Logan. What kind of monster doesn't want to get the dimples?"

"If these were dimples of anything close to pleasure, I'd take them all day long. I'd submit the smiling dimples to Gerber for consideration as their next spokesbaby. But these are not dimples of satisfaction, Ace. No. These are dimples of discontent. No one wants to be the recipient of the Dimples of Discontent."

Rory frowned.

"Yes, those! Exactly!" Logan pointed an accusatory finger at Rory's disgruntled face. "My fragile ego can't take it."

"If she's really teething, maybe it helps her gums to get some relief."

"It seems more personal than that, Ace." Logan started up the stairs, and Rory wasn't sure if they were mid-fight or flight, so she followed him just to be on the safe side. As Logan started unbuttoning his dress shirt, Rory realized that he intended to go change into his sleeping clothes and she was going to be the unlucky one who was about to encounter whatever chagrined expression Bea intended to communicate, even after she'd emerged victorious in _Rock, Paper, Scissors_. "Maybe she senses her father is about the leave the country for 10 days." Logan half-shouted from the walk-in closet.

"Maybe she's tired of the phone ringing." Rory shouted back, before she started her long walk down the hall to find out exactly what Bea's most recent bout of righteous indignation was really trying to tell them. "And she gets the dimples from you!"

To no one's shock, Logan chose not to acknowledge Rory's dig about the attorney calls, and she was barely halfway out the door before he'd completely changed the subject. "I think this whole missing passport thing might be a sign, Ace." Rory could hear hangers clanging and sliding up and down the bars of the closet as Logan sorted through clothing pockets in search of the booklet. "If I find it or not, honestly, I don't think it's a great idea if I go. You shouldn't have to handle things without me, and it's not like they really need me in Europe. It's all just a formality. A show. A little smoke and mirrors to keep the board happy. But Bea, she needs me. There are too many developmental milestones I could potentially miss. And so much growth. I was reading What to Expect the First Year and they were saying that babies Bea's age tend to have growth spurts around this age. I shouldn't miss a growth spurt, Ace, she could double in size while I'm gone!"

Rory poked her head into the closet, where Logan had been completely and utterly swallowed into a sea of worsted wool and was invisible to the naked eye except for a pair of ankles and socked feet. "Logan, if that baby doubles in size in the next ten days, I'll call Guinness first and then the pediatrician. It's really just a few days, just a blip on the radar of growth spurts, in the grand scheme of things."

When he didn't produce an immediate rebuttal, she counted her argument as a win. "Ugh, I found it." Came his muffled voice and a few seconds later, Logan finally emerged from the walk-in wearing a pair of black track pants and a faded t-shirt leftover from his days at Exeter. And from the looks of things where the soft cotton strained against his pecs and biceps, Logan had the potential to rip right out of the thing if he flexed the wrong way. His hair had morphed from artfully ruffled to just plain adorably rumpled as he'd changed and at that, her chest flooded with a familiar fond warmth. Logan caught her staring and wrinkled his nose, making him look closer to the age he was when he originally bought the t-shirt than the one listed on his current identification. Sure, it was the same nose that was part of the same face that had probably launched a million of Rory's collective ships over the years, but it was still a face that she loved immeasurably.

Man, did she love him. From the knowing smirk that always evolved into a glowing smile she thought had potential to power a small European country to the fine crinkles that he'd earned at the corners of his eyes from conveying that same smile to people throughout the years, and she loved all of it. Even when he was being impenetrably obstinate, she loved that face. "See something you're interested in?" It was douchey and something she'd normally scoff at and quip about but today was different and she'd let it slide. Instead, she practically ran to him, throwing her arms around his torso, and enveloping him in what seemed to be her thousandth impromptu squeeze in the last few weeks. It was like she thought he was likely to disappear or something. "I do appreciate the enthusiasm." Logan said, patting her back, as she clearly constricted his lung capacity. "I just don't know if I deserve it. To what do I owe this latest armful of Ace?"

"Just...just take it, Logan. Don't look a gift hug in the mouth."

"I would never." His open palm was a warm, solid weight on her head as he smoothed at her hair with her cheek pressed against his chest. She never stopped being amazed at how solid and unyielding he was physically, even though he was so soft and pliant in so many other ways. "Hey, you know, I promise I'm fine. I was joking about the tumor. And I will get Bea, no matter what message her face is conveying, because I am a big boy and I can take it."

"I know you're fine. You just...I love your dumb beautiful face and I didn't want you to walk away without telling you."

His warm laugh vibrated against the length of her torso as it pressed up against his. "My dumb face thanks you for the interest. Remind me to wear this twenty year old shirt more often then, cause apparently it's a real babe magnet."

"Babes of all ages," she said as she pushed him playfully toward the nursery and another night of attempting to soothe the savage Bea.

Rory would readily admit that she wasn't much of a mind reader, and god knew that she sometimes took too long to read the signs of things that were right there in the open, but as the night progressed, Logan didn't seem any more or less out of sorts than he had been lately. They tag-teamed their parenting duties and traded quick kisses as they rotated tasks and negotiated peace with Bea, who remained inexplicably restless throughout the evening. The newly located passport sat like a beacon on the coffee table and more than once, Rory caught Logan staring it down like he was summoning the strength to even want to use it in the next few days. And if he could manage to dial up that kind of fortitude, it was only fair that Rory could do the same and finally design a way to artfully approach his lack of desire to get closure about his parents, and what that might mean for his mood.

But as they settled into bed, exhausted and finally existing in a pocket of blissful cry-free stillness, it seemed much more important that they sleep.


End file.
